The Bar Council of India [BCI] has finally notified the revised syllabus for the upcoming tenth All India Bar Examination [AIBE X] to be held on March 26, 2017. Prior to this, the Council had drastically revised the syllabus and examination pattern twice – for the fourth AIBE and then the seventh AIBE. It appears that the BCI is following a pattern and is revising the AIBE syllabus after every three AIBEs..

The Council has made some major changes in the distribution of marks per subject and has removed four subjects as well as added four new subjects. The subjects which have been removed from the syllabus are: Jurisprudence, Public International Law, Corporate Social Responsibility and Limitation Act. On the other hand, Taxation, Public Interest Litigation, Intellectual Property Rights and Land Acquisition Act have been added to the syllabus..

It appears that the examination pattern [Marks, Time Limit, etc.] remains the same . A tabular comparison between the old and new syllabus can be found here.

With barely a month left for the Bar Exam, such drastic changes in the syllabus must have certainly startled the recently graduated Advocates who are planning to take AIBE X. Even more unsettling than the change of syllabus is the Council’s decision to not provide any Model Question Paper for the upcoming Bar Exam like it did during the fourth AIBE [AIBE IV]. The Council has already stopped providing any study material for the Bar Exam and a Model Question paper based on the new syllabus would have been helpful to candidates planning to the take the upcoming Bar Exam.